Fever vs tempo moved onto on Tuesday, Aug. 18, with the Indiana Fever and Toronto Tempo set for a 6 p.m. CT tipoff at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto. Fans in Iowa could also catch it on WOI Local 5 in Des Moines and WQAD in the Quad Cities, a useful setup for anyone following Caitlin Clark from college into the WNBA.
Clark’s 26-point reset
Clark entered the game after a 26-point, 9-assist performance in a 95-91 win over the Atlanta Dream on Aug. 16. She shot 45% from the field and recorded her eighth game of the season with at least 25 points and eight assists, the kind of production that keeps Indiana’s offense from flattening out when the pace tightens.
Kelsey Mitchell added 20 points in that overtime win, and Makayla Timpson scored a career-high 20 points as the Fever set a franchise record for points in regulation. That was the form Indiana carried into its 36th regular-season game, with a 23-12 record behind it and a roster built to score in more than one way.
Toronto’s 10-23 slide
The Tempo entered at 10-23 and had lost 10 consecutive games and 14 of 15, so the second-ever meeting between the teams arrived with one side chasing stability and the other defending a four-game winning streak. Indiana won the first meeting on June 16, 113-91, and four Indiana players scored 18 or more points in that game.
Marina Mabrey led the Tempo with 20.8 points, while Isabelle Harrison averaged 12.0 points and 5.7 rebounds and Laura Juskaite averaged 10.1 points. Those numbers show why Toronto’s scoring load has been narrow; against a Fever team that has already found multiple high-end options, that usually leaves little margin.
Aug. 31 to Sept. 16 gap
A two-week break runs from Aug. 31 to Sept. 16 because of the FIBA Women's World Cup in Berlin, Germany, so this stretch mattered as one of the last clean looks at both teams before the schedule opens up again. Sue Bird announced the 12-player team on Aug. 6 for the Sept. 4–13 tournament, and Caitlin Clark and Aliyah Boston were among the players selected.
For Iowa viewers, the practical move was simple: use for the national feed or WOI Local 5 and WQAD for local carriage. With Clark fresh off 26 points and 9 assists, the Fever carried the sharper recent form into Toronto, and Toronto had to find a way to interrupt a slide that had already swallowed 10 straight games.
